WH40K: “Kal Jerico, Sinner's Bounty” (part seventeen)

Second to last update! It's almost hard to believe, at this point. Still, the tail end of this book has generally been the best part of it, aside from the almost-certainly-corporate-mandated character overdose.

Chapter 34: Black Sump​

Kal and Zoom keep riding the war rig forward, followed by a motorcade of Cawdor bikes and ATV type things, as they push through the mutant lines and try to break open some of the shaft entrances that have been sealed off. They need to pull back a little, though, once the blackpowder boys manage to turn their homemade mortars on the rig; in its current state, the vehicle needs to avoid taking those hits. The choices at this point are to either try to loop around back toward Perdition and trust that they've done enough damage to delay the mutants until Amenute can show up with reinforcements, or to abandon ship and detonate the fuel bomb now in the hope of inflicting one last blow against the enemy before running back on foot.

Zoom decides he has a better idea, though; plow right on ahead and try to reach Wart's main camp before setting off the fuel bomb. Decapitating the mutant army entirely, and sacrificing his life to save Perdition is a much more dignified manner than what he agreed to with Kal.

Kal objects to this plan, both on account of the deal they made, and on account of himself being aboard this suicide truck as well. Zoom's response is, essentially, "well, yeah, that's what makes the joke funny." Kal can either assist in the suicide bombing run, try to ditch the vehicle and try to make it back to Perdition on his own with mutants all around, or be shot in the back of the head by one of Zoom's surviving crew members right now.

Or...not. Apparently, they were having this exchange while the war rig's entry hatch was open overhead. And, at that very moment, a bat-rider takes advantage of their distraction to make a close pass overhead and throw a javelin right into Zoom's right lung. It's not clear if this makes Kal's situation better or worse, honestly.

Back at Perdition, Beatram is manning one of the heavy weapon turrets Zoom stole from the Guilders, and quickly losing his optimism. The mutants already in the city are still wreaking havoc, despite the push out the north gate. There's a brief fight where Beatram meets up with his two Goliath sidekicks again while the three of them take down a crocoman who seems to have not been quite as hardy as the late Slabscale.

For some reason, Beatram cares more about Kal getting away than he does about Zoom or the Golden Sack. I'm starting to feel like this guy's real beef might actually be with Yolanda for marrying Kal before he could. Anyway, he apparently wants to try and exit the city walls so he can catch up with the limping war rig. Somehow.

Cut over to Yolanda, who's on one of the boats happily fighting a bunch of nondescript axchuck-wielders with the help of...um...one of the other sixteen bounty hunters who the story never had time to give a personality to. Grendelson the dorf wanders over and points out to her that the boat is sinking, so it's good that they never managed to get far from the docks. Especially since the blood and bodies falling into the sump has drawn a feeding frenzy of creatures over, and it's doubtful a live swimmer would survive for even a short distance. Oh no. What is going to happen to Yolanda? I am worried that she might not survive. How terrible.

From her, cut to Scabs and Amenute riding their dire bat out one of the shafts. They hear the battle going on from behind them, and Amenute reveals that she wasn't being quite honest when she told the baselines that the nearest ratskins might be a few hours away. In fact, they're literally right behind and beneath Perdition, in a half-collapsed dome cavern tucked in to the same section of underhive foundation. The ratskins never actually ceded this territory to the Cawdor; they just moved to one of their secret fortification spots and avoided being seen to let the Cawdor think they'd all been chased out.

I'm a little skeptical of how they pulled this off, exactly, but if they have more psykers like Amenute then that would help explain it.

At the moment, there are a bunch of temporary ratskin camps hidden among the fungus forests fed by Lake Perdition runoff, in addition to the main group. Looks like recent arrivals. Scabs quickly surmises that Amenute heard about this gathering of forces via the pipesong when they first entered the Perdition cavern, and simply decided to omit some of the details when she told the group what she'd heard. Scabs is having more misgivings about this girl than ever. When they land, they're met by Tobbo, the guy who I inferred was responsible for killing Amenute's family before it was revealed that Zoom did it, and who is now allying with the mutants.

Or...oh, huh. The plot thickens!

Amenute accuses Tobbo of having betrayed her tribe, the Shadowroots, to the Redemptionists, and he doesn't deny it. Apparently, some time after that, Zoom betrayed him in turn, and so now he's resorted to allying with Wart in order to get a piece of the local territory that he wanted for his tribe after wiping out the Shadowroots. He's apparently the chief (or at least A chief) of the Black Sump tribe, and may have gained this status in the process of betraying his people's rivals after faking an alliance. So, that's a whole chain of intrigue that's been in the background of the whole plot up until now, I guess.

So. Tobbo - who has some armed guards with him, of course - asks Amenute why he shouldn't just kill her right now. She replies that, as the successor to the Shadowroot chiefdom by default, she challenges Tobbo to a duel. Tobbo doesn't strike me as the type who'd normally agree to something that honorable, but the guards he brought with him are looking at him a little side-eyed when he makes to brush her off. So, he either has to give her her duel, or take a nasty hit to his legitimacy. He does have an out, though; unlike the Shadowroots, the Black Sumps only allow men to participate in these honor duels. But, she seems to have already known this, and reminds him that she can still appoint a champion.

Scabs groans and sinks his face into his hand. He wonders if maybe she had this in mind all the way back in Two Pumps, if indeed she mind controlled him into releasing her. I feel like that would be leaning a little too hard on her precognitive abilities, to the point of "how could she have ever gotten caged in the first place" once again. I'm thinking it's more likely that Scabs is being paranoid, and she just figured out she'd need him for this once they were already on their way to Perdition together.

Scabs doesn't particularly want to fight this guy, but he doesn't have many other options. He just reminds Amenute that he's a mercenary, so she had fucking better pay him for this. She reminds him that this is still all in the interest of saving Kal and the others, since they foolishly committed themselves to Perdition's defense, so if that's worth it to him then that should be well and good. Okay, that's a reasonable enough thing to point out. Amenute's got a good head on her even without the psychic powers it can do.

So, they duel. No guns allowed in these battles, apparently. Traditional ratskin CQC tactics are to go maximum aggro and try to end the battle as quickly as possible. Scabs knows this, and his bounty hunting experience has taught him how to fight patiently and evasively, so his fighting style is a decent soft counter to Tobbo's. He gets cut up a little, but in the end he gets a cord around Tobbo's neck and unceremoniously chokes him to death.

Cue a little dirge by Tobbo's men, followed by a scary war cry led by Amenute as she starts rallying the tribal coalition for an attack on a new target. She doesn't need to talk any of the other chiefs over or anything? Just kill this one guy, and now everyone will be down with betraying Wart with no explanation or convincing needed? Um...okay, sure I guess.

A maniacal grin comes over Amenute's face as she relishes the prospect of taking back what was hers, and even Elstob's terrible voice acting for her can't completely undermine the moment. Scabs wonders if maybe he should have just sided with Tobbo. End chapter.


The reversals and betrayals of this chapter were all very well executed. Zoom's twist, with him deciding to make a suicide attack with Kal basically stuck in the war rig with him, was both surprising and completelyunsurprising given his characterization. But really, the bigger twist there was him getting sniped by an unnamed mook during a dramatic confrontation with Kal, leaving the latter just kind of standing there in the rig trying to figure out what the fuck he's even supposed to do now. That felt like a much more successful redo of some of the attempted action comedy with Kal that failed to impress me in the first third of the book.

The stuff with Amenute, while a good twist, would have been better if Scabs had some more opportunities to be proactive. As it is, the sequence was narrated by effectively a passive protagonist being railroaded through a gauntlet, which is really a waste of Scabs. The worldbuilding with ratskin politics also seemed off to me in a different way from 40K's usual flavor of semi-lovable stupidity. More ratskin stuff in earlier chapters to prep the reader for understanding their society would have helped. I suppose it's possible that this information was provided in earlier Necromunda books that the reader is expected to have already finished; that would actually make a lot of sense. Anyway, it was a fun sequence despite the flaws.

The in-between stuff with Yolanda, Beatram, and the contractually mandated plastic toy collection was a total waste of space. At least it was short, allowing this to still be a pretty good chapter overall.

Chapter 35: Fires of Perdition​

The war rig is getting attacked by more bat riders now, and failed evasive maneuvers get it stuck in the fungal swamp by lake's edge. Kal and the surviving crew try to fend off more and more attackers, venting fire from the overfilled fuel tanks to hold them off, but it won't last forever.

In a final honorable gesture, Zoom - still clinging to life - tells Kal about the dead man's switch, and tells him that if he really doesn't want to die in a glorious blast for the will of the Emperor he'd better make tracks. He and Kal had that moment of understanding and mutual respect back in the hangar battle, and Kal didn't try to screw him over since then, so this makes sense. Kal manages to get out of the blast radius and slip past the attacking mutants before Zoom's heart stops and the rig goes up in a giant fireball that takes out most of Wart's batrider corps plus a bunch of walkers. Fortunately for Kal, as we've already learned, firebombs don't have a suction effect in the grim darkness of the forty-first millennium.

As Kal wanders away from the flaming wreckage of the war rig and toward the flaming wreckage of Perdition, Beatram gets the drop on him and holds him at gunpoint. He thinks Kal knows where the Golden Sack is, apparently. Kal says that if it was still aboard the war rig, then they're probably breathing it right now. However, Kal doesn't think Zoom would have left it aboard. He asks why the hell Beatram thinks it was still aboard, and Beatram tells him that he learned it from Belladonna. Who is almost certainly trying to make off with it herself, now that he thinks about it. Lol. Anyway, Kal manages to convince Beatram that he has his cyberdog watching Belladonna, so he should give him a lift back to what's left of Perdition. Not sure if he's telling the truth or not, but just in case he is Beatram agrees. As they drive off, Kal half-reluctantly makes the sign of the nazi space eagle with his hands at the wreck of the war rig behind them. I guess Zoom earned a salute by giving Kal that warning, at least.

Meanwhile, Amenute and Scabs (the latter basically just being her reluictant bodyguard at this point, I guess) lead the ratskin army into Perdition's flank, surprising the besieging mutants. Just like their duels, ratskin war doctrine is all about attacking quickly, doing a lot of damage, and then retreating if you can't win with your big alpha strike. So, lots of people run up and start killing axchuck mutants, while Amenute sends their warbeasts and mounts into a panic. Apparently she can panic or pacify multiple animals simultaneously, even if she can only control one at a time.

Jump over to Yolanda and dorf boi, who have managed to get their sinking boat back to the docks. Just in time, too, because all the other sump creatures that came to eat the dead are now fleeing before the advance of another kraken. Apparently, this lake's connection to the main sump body is big enough for one of those to get through, and they've spilled enough blood into the water at this point to attract one. Oh dear. Mutant skiffs and remaining Cawdor boats are being pulled down by the tentacles, and it'll probably start grabbing people off the docks themselves soon. Yolanda and dorf guy, who she seems to have sort of befriended-ish, decide to round up whatever companions of theirs are still alive and GTFO at this point.


Not much to say about this one. Short, kind of boring chapter, aside from the drama of the main Macguffin of the story blowing himself up.


That's the second to last update. Really, the only question left that I care much about is whether Wart or Amenute will be ruling this cavern when the smoke clears.